Is there a free AI visibility tracker?

Yes. citability.dev runs a free scan that checks the infrastructure signals correlated with AI citation (robots.txt permissions for AI crawlers, structured data, rendering method) in under two minutes, with paid tiers from $49 for live citation testing. Most competitors offer a trial rather than a free tier: Otterly and Knowatoa start with trials on paid plans, while Profound has a paid entry tier and a demo, not a free tier. A manual alternative is running 20 topic queries yourself in ChatGPT and Perplexity and counting linked citations, which costs nothing but does not scale.

What is the cheapest AI visibility tracker?

Otterly.ai has the lowest paid entry price at roughly $29 per month for a small prompt allowance. citability.dev is the cheapest way to get a verifiable number: the scan is free and the first paid tier is a one-time $49 audit rather than a subscription. Knowatoa ($59) and LLMrefs ($79) sit in the mid double digits per month, and Profound starts at $99 per month for a single-engine tier with custom enterprise pricing above its $399 Growth plan. Pricing in this space changes fast, so verify on the vendor's pricing page before buying; the numbers here were checked in July 2026.

Do AI visibility tools test real AI answers or estimates?

Both kinds exist, and the difference matters more than price. Live-tested tools run your queries against the actual engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) and record whether your domain was cited in the real response. Estimated tools model your likely visibility from proxies such as brand mentions, search volume, or SERP data. An estimate can look healthy while your true citation rate is 0%. citability.dev, Otterly, and Profound run live engine tests; legacy SEO suites and several trackers report modeled scores. Ask one question of any vendor: can I see the raw engine response behind this number?

What should an AI visibility tracker actually measure?

Three separate things: visibility (is your brand mentioned in the answer text), citation (is your domain linked as a source), and recommendability (does the engine recommend you when a buyer asks for options). A single blended score hides the difference, and the mentioned-but-never-linked failure mode is the most common one. A useful tracker reports the three metrics separately, per engine and per query, and shows you the raw response so you can verify any number it reports.

Best AI Visibility Tracker in 2026: 5 Tools Compared, Real Pricing

The best AI visibility tracker for most teams is the one that matches your query volume and budget: Citability starts free and scales from a $49 one-time audit to $495 tiers for verifiable citation testing, versus Profound ($99/mo entry, custom enterprise above $399/mo), Otterly ($29 to $489/mo), Knowatoa (from $59/mo), and LLMrefs ($79/mo flat). Price is the visible difference; the structural one is whether the tool tests real engine answers or estimates them. A modeled score can look healthy while your actual citation rate is 0%, the failure mode documented in the 0% ChatGPT Citation Trap.

This page is our own entry in a comparison that has so far been argued entirely by third-party listicles. We build one of the tools below, so read the table as a vendor's comparison with the receipts to check it: every Citability number links to a live test you can reproduce, and every competitor price was checked against the vendor's own pricing page in July 2026.

What is an AI visibility tracker (and what "citation rate" actually measures)#

An AI visibility tracker measures whether AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) mention, cite, or recommend your domain when users ask questions in your category. Three metrics get conflated under "visibility," and a useful tracker separates them:

Visibility: your brand appears in the answer text.
Citation: your domain is linked as a source. This is the metric that produces referral traffic.
Recommendability: the engine names you when a buyer asks for options ("best X for Y").

Citation rate is the percentage of topic-relevant queries where an engine links your domain as a source. It is the hardest of the three to move and the only one that guarantees a click path. Engines also weight sources differently: the citation rules ChatGPT and Perplexity apply are not the same, a difference documented in Perplexity vs ChatGPT Citation Rules. The tools that measure domain citation rate comparison covers the measurement methodology in depth; this page focuses on choosing a tracker.

Citability vs Profound, Otterly, Knowatoa, LLMrefs: pricing comparison#

Prices checked July 2026 against each vendor's public pricing page. These move fast: verify before purchase.

Tool	Entry price	Top listed tier	Query volume	Citation number	Best for
Citability	Free scan	$495	Per-audit query panel, live-run	Live-tested, confidence-labeled, raw responses inspectable	Teams that need proof, not a composite score
Profound	$99/mo (1 engine, 50 prompts)	Custom enterprise (above $399/mo Growth)	50-100 prompts on published tiers	Daily structured prompts across engines	Enterprise budgets, many markets
Otterly	$29/mo (15 prompts)	$489/mo (400 prompts)	15 to 400 prompts	Live prompt monitoring	Cheapest credible subscription entry
Knowatoa	$59/mo	Custom enterprise (above $199/mo Growth)	Not published per tier	Engine checks per client	Agencies and white-label reporting
LLMrefs	$79/mo flat	Single plan (extra prompt blocks purchasable)	500 prompts, 7 engines	Keyword-style tracking	Flat-fee simplicity

One-sentence differentiators:

Citability is audit-shaped rather than dashboard-shaped: you get a verifiable citation test with the raw engine responses attached, so any number in the report can be checked, and the free scan means the baseline costs nothing.
Profound is the enterprise incumbent: a $99 single-engine starter exists, but the product is built for the Growth ($399/mo, 3 engines) and custom-enterprise tiers where multi-market monitoring lives.
Otterly is the value pick for continuous monitoring: real prompt tracking at the lowest subscription entry point.
Knowatoa is built for agencies managing several client domains under one roof.
LLMrefs treats AI visibility like rank tracking: one flat fee, a fixed prompt set, no tiering decisions.

Why verifiable beats estimated: the real-API-test difference#

Most visibility numbers in this market are estimates: models built on brand mentions, search volume, or SERP proxies. Estimates are cheap to produce at scale, which is why dashboards full of them are cheap to sell. The problem is directional: an estimate tells you what an engine probably says; a live test records what it actually said, with the response saved as evidence.

Citability's methodology runs your queries against the live engines and labels every result as verified or best-effort, so you know which numbers came from a real engine response and which have caveats. No composite score is reported, because a composite averages the exact gap you need to see: a domain can be mentioned in every answer and linked in none. If a tracker will not show you the raw response behind a number, treat the number as marketing.

The free scan does not claim a citation rate at all. It checks the infrastructure layer that blocks citation before content quality even matters: AI crawler access in robots.txt, structured data coverage, and rendering method. Running it first means you never pay to measure a problem you could have fixed in an afternoon.

How to choose based on budget and query volume#

$0, single site: run the free Citability scan, then a manual 20-query panel in ChatGPT and Perplexity. That is a real baseline for the cost of an hour.
Under $50, need a defensible number: the $49 Citability audit runs a live-tested citation panel and returns evidence you can put in front of a client or a boss.
$29 to $99/mo, want continuous trend data: Otterly at entry tier, LLMrefs if you prefer one flat fee and a fixed prompt set, or Profound's single-engine starter.
Agency with multiple clients: Knowatoa's multi-client structure, or per-client Citability audits if your clients want verifiable reports rather than dashboards.
Enterprise, many markets and hundreds of prompts: Profound, with the budget conversation that implies.

FAQ#

The four questions buyers actually ask are answered in the FAQ block on this page: whether a free tracker exists, which option is cheapest, whether these tools test real answers or estimates, and what a tracker should measure in the first place. Each answer stands alone, so an engine can lift it without the surrounding page.

Run the free scan to get your baseline before you pay for any tracker, including ours.